Unicorn Blood and the Elixir of Life
by Clara Maplewood
Summary: Baron Xavier LeRivierus. The name is foreign, the story is unknown...but the legacy is unforgettable. PG-13 because it's kinda bloody, and because of some serious angst. Bear with me, I've been reading Grisham, lol. R/R, and enjoy!


© Clara Maplewood Y2K+2 

**Hello all!  This is the first fic I've written on my own in a longlonglonglong time.  I hope you like it.  It'll probably be a bit angsty, but then again, so am I! (to quote the author of one of the first fanfics I ever read).  Enjoy! **

"Xavier?"  

He whirled around, placed his wand to his own temple, and whispered "_Nocturne," utilizing the Night Vision spell.  True, it was Dark magic, but such issues of morality made no difference to Baron Xavier LeRivierus.  "Nicolas, is that you?" _

"Of course it's me," Nicolas was making his way towards his colleague, one hand grasping his illuminated wand, the other lightly brushing the line of trees that marked the beginning of the Forbidden Forest.  "Who else would be daft enough to be walking out here at this time of night?  The bloody moon's almost set!"  As he spoke, he raised his wand so that its focus was Xavier's face.  Disapproval suddenly dropped itself over his features like a stage curtain.  He had noticed the abnormal bluish-green hue around Xavier's eyes and now knew about the Dark spell he had used.  Nicolas cringed slightly.  "You didn't." 

Xavier rolled his eyes.  "Don't be so far up on your high horse, Nicolas.  You were never squeamish about Dark magic before."  

"Yes, well, Perenelle is…an extraordinary woman," he said, gazing fondly down at his own left hand, on which was placed a golden wedding band, sparkling in the moonlight.  

"A self-righteous woman," Xavier corrected, "And one who has never understood the importance of our work."  

Nicolas grinned slightly.  "Perhaps she never will.  I don't much care, to tell true.  Now what's all this about, Xavier?  Why did you need to speak with me so urgently?" 

He didn't answer, merely took a deep breath through his nose and put a steering hand on Nicolas's back.  "Come."  

The two trekked deep into the Forbidden Forest in silence.  Well, relative silence, at any rate, since the snapping of twigs and beastly growls pierced the still night air like arrows.  It didn't take an Inner Eye to know that Nicolas had just graduated from Hufflepuff House just four years ago, Xavier thought.  There wasn't a self-respecting Slytherin who'd defend so uppity a woman so vehemently, even if it was his bride.  Why, if Nicolas had concentrated half as much on alchemy as he had on Perenelle-

Xavier's ranting thoughts were halted by a savage sort of cry, like that of a bobcat, from off to the left.  Nicolas jumped and fixed his wandbeam on unpredictable companion, laughing nervously.  "All right, enough is enough.  Whatever we need to talk about, this is more than secluded enough for it to stay between us.  Now what's going on?" 

"Nothing, I just…" Xavier hesitated for a second.  The Night-Vision spell made the frightened, trusting look on his friend's face all too clear.  Eternal life, he reminded himself.  Power beyond all telling for this one deed.  Mudbloods and Squibs banished from wizarding communities at a wave of his hand.  The thought strengthened his resolve.  "I just wondered how the Sorcerer's Stone formula is coming along?" 

"Ah!  Well, that is…that is certainly going well.  You know how far we've come just since January."  Nicolas avoided Xavier's eyes just a touch too obviously, even as his hand rose just a touch too quickly to plunge into his pocket just a touch too protectively.  

He was somewhere between irritated and delighted; Nicolas had made the location of the formula obvious, but also made it necessary to use force, since he wasn't admitting freely that he had the formula for the Stone's creation.  "Indeed," the Baron said icily.  

"But, er, why talk about work in our free time?  How is your wife?  What news of your daughter's new suitor?" 

Oh, Nicolas was a wily sort!  Would have been fantastic in Slytherin.  Xavier could play his game for awhile.  Get the younger man's guard back down… "Fiancée, actually." 

"What!  Chaerona and Theodore are engaged to be married?" 

"Two months hence, on the solstice.  Young master Snape came to ask for my blessing last night, and the way times are changing nowadays, it seems that that's all the say I've got in the matter."  

Nicolas laughed and removed his hand from its post in his jacket pocket.  "Well, my congratulations to the young couple.  And my compliments to you."  

This delayed Xavier further.  "What?  Why?" 

"You've the courage to raise a child up right.  I, on the other hand…" He laughed again.  "I've got enough trouble managing myself.  For example, just the other day, I - " 

Before Nicolas could say another word, Xavier shouted "Expelliarmus!"  He caught the wand deftly and doused the light.  

For a moment, Nicolas stood stunned in the dark.  "Xavier, old boy - " 

"Don't be stupid with me.  Give it up, now!" he snarled. 

"Give _what up?" _

"The formula, you daft little fool!  Take it out of your pocket and out of the range of your Anti-Summoning Lock, or I'll take it by force!"  

Nicolas went paler than the moon.  "Come now…you aren't serious, are you?  I already told you, you know how far the research has come.  D'you really think the findings are enough that I've a copy of the Sorcerer's Stone formula stuffed in my pocket?"  He forced a laugh.  "You _are kidding." _

"I should think that I'm in a bit more of a position to tell whether I'm kidding.  Tell me right now, will you give it willingly…"  He pointed his wand at the wide-eyed figure standing a few feet away from him.  "Or will I put your idealistic conscience into shock with the Dark magic I can turn loose on you?" 

Nicolas looked horrified.  His face was set in the expression of one who had just been Petrified.  After an interminable moment, he bolted in a blind sprint through the trees.  

"Shock it is, then!"  Xavier whispered.  Holding one wand in each hand, he sent a sinister thread of black lightning after Nicolas's retreating silhouette.  It was a useful spell, successful in both retrieving and punishing a runaway.  Nicolas was raised into the air and thrown back to the exact spot where he had been standing, all the while encased in a ball of charred electricity.  Another part of the spell muffled the screams.  After it was over, Xavier pulled the crumpled figure to its feet, slammed him against a nearby tree for support, and pressed Nicolas's wand back into his hand.  "Remove the Anti-Summoning Lock on your pockets or I'll Stun you and leave you to the werewolves," he spat.  

"No…" Nicolas groaned.  "I'll…I'll remove the lock."  He gripped his wand clumsily, purposefully pointing the wrong end at his pocket; the wand-tip was aimed at Xavier.  

Xavier saw it.  Advancing on him, wand drawn, he started to say the Stunning Curse. "Stupe - "

"Impedimenta!"  He yelled frantically.  "Lumos!  Expelliarmus!"  

 Stillness fell after Nicolas caught Xavier's wand.  The two men surveyed each other with disgust and enmity, though their reasons were entirely different.  A thin stream of blood ran down Nicolas's chin from where he'd bitten through his bottom lip as he fell to the ground.  "You slime," he murmured, breathing heavily.  

"Name-calling is beneath us," Xavier said coldly.  "We're completely even right now.  The next move is up to you."  He took a step closer, his arms spread as though in surrender.  "Yet I still see my advantage."  Another step.  "And do you know what it is?"  They were now face to face, Nicolas grasping the wands like they were his last hope.  Xavier smiled thinly and raised his eyebrows.  "You're too honorable to kill me."  

In less than a second, Xavier had knocked the wind out of Nicolas with a swift punch to the diaphragm and stolen both of the wands back.  He pulled Nicolas's head up by the back of his hair and aimed his own wand at him.  "I changed my mind, by the way.  Poetic justice, after all, must be done…I won't Stun you and let you die at the werewolves's claws.  I'll kill you with your own wand, just as you trapped yourself with your own silly idealism."  He pressed the wands against Nicolas's throat and hissed into his blotchy, terrified face, "Say your prayers, fool." 

A brilliant white light suddenly flooded the clearing, temporarily blinding both men.  Xavier threw the arm that wasn't holding the wands over his own eyes, unconsciously letting Nicolas slip from his grasp.  When his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw a ring of magnificent one-horned white horses surrounding the clearing. 

"Incredible…" Nicolas whispered, mystified, from the tree's roots.  "I've always heard that they were in the Forest…but to actually be this close to unicorns, Xavier…" His transfixion was such that he didn't remember the circumstances for a moment.  It quickly came back to him that Xavier had been trying to kill him.  He skittered backwards, crab-style, and tried to get to his feet.  

Even in the presence of the unicorns, the Baron never forgot his aim for a second.  He automatically judged the distance between himself and Nicolas, then set about closing that distance, diving at the runaway's ankles and bringing him down with the _crack of jawbone hitting rock.  Breathing raggedly, Xavier clawed at the prone figure's pockets with complete disregard for Nicolas's yelling.  "Shut up, you fool!"  He hissed between his teeth.  "Shut up, shut up, shut up…yes!"  Xavier felt his hand close around the square of parchment.  He pulled it from Nicolas's pocket and held it aloft, his triumphant smile gleaming terrifically mad in the white light emanating from the unicorns.  _

Now, perhaps it was because his ears were too full of his own victorious cackling.  Perhaps it was because the senses are sometimes dulled by a fierce rush of adrenaline.  Nicolas Flamel insisted ever after that the unicorn didn't even run on the soil, but rather that its hooves churned the air above the ground.  But whatever the reason, Baron Xavier LeRivierus did not see the creature charging to punish him for the glaring evil in his soul.  

Nicolas had just seized Xavier's wrist and wrenched the parchment out of his hand when it happened:  The unicorn's horn was a dagger of justice, stabbing the muscle in his shoulder as the front hooves pummeled his ribcage.  A fierce neighing escaped its throat.  As the initial shock of the attack wore off, Xavier fired the Reductor curse onto the huge male unicorn.  It fell to the side, a hole blasted through its midsection.  Another was serving to steady Nicolas, but Xavier screamed a Crippling Curse at it, and its four legs crumpled beneath it.  Suddenly, he found himself being assaulted by at least ten  strong, full-grown unicorns at once, and the rest had rushed to Nicolas's aid.  He used every Dark spell in his power, throwing balls of lightning, shooting burning streams of acid, blinding, maiming, killing ruthlessly.  He paid no regard to the fact that he was thoughtlessly slaughtering the most serene, rare beasts ever to walk the earth.  The idea of self-defense never crossed his mind.  All he could think of was getting that bloody formula!  Living forever!  Effecting an eternity of security for purebloods!  What was a handful of unicorns to the concept of eternity?  Nothing.  Hah! Less than nothing!  

Perhaps they were indeed less than nothing, but this "less than nothing" was not only preventing him from achieving eternal life, it was also quickly decreasing the odds that he'd survive to see daylight.    The sharp horns tore at his flesh, creating hundreds of small wounds and a half dozen large ones that added up to huge trouble.  He felt his own breathing growing more and more labored as he fought to throw off the last two, most persistent unicorns.  "Lomacapito!"  Off came the head of the smaller!  The larger had sustained many minor injuries, but had managed to dodge Xavier's more debilitating spells.  This was the unicorn that lowered its head, horn locked on the target, and pounded forward with all the ugly justice of a grieving animal.  The natural weapon sunk deep into Xavier's stomach before the unicorn ripped its head away from him as though disgusted at the notion of touching the evil being.  

Xavier tasted his own blood flooding his mouth.  His wandhand, almost numb with pain from the stabbed shoulder, was in danger of dropping the wand at any second.  Dark magic was no longer an option; it required more magical energy than he could possibly muster in his current state.  Xavier knew that he had only one spell left.  "R-reducto!"  he gasped, then fell to the ground.  

Nicolas had flattened himself against a tree.  His unicorn guardians had disappeared into the woods with the knowledge that the Baron would do him no harm.  At first it appeared that Xavier was dead, and Nicolas started edging around the clearing, skirting unicorn corpses as he went.  "Lumos," he said in a shaky whisper.  Suddenly, the wand's pool of light washed over the carefully folded piece of parchment.  Nicolas stooped and fumbled to pick it up in his trembling fingers.  He rose, took one last look at the body of his treacherous friend and was about to leave the clearing when he heard a thin, strained voice speak.  

"Nicolas…" 

He jumped and turned around, training his wandbeam on Xavier's near-dead body, lying on its front in a puddle of blood.  It was a horrific sight.  The Baron's cloak had fallen over his forehead in the struggle, and it made his eyes, still under the Night-Vision Spell, glow out of its shadow in an eerie band of dark blue-green.  One arm was pushing feebly at the ground in a pathetic effort to raise himself, and the other was reaching out to Nicolas.  Every inch of him was covered in blood, whether it was his own, or the silvery blood of unicorns.  "Oh, God..." 

"Nicolas…" The outstretched hand reached further, begging for help.  "Help me…I…I'm dying, Nicolas…" His illuminated eyes weren't focused on Nicolas's, though.  He was still staring hungrily at the tiny bit of parchment.  "Just pick me up…bring me back to the castle…"  

Terrible conflict showed on his features.  He looked up at the canopy of trees, trying desperately to remember that Xavier had just tried to kill him for the Sorcerer's Stone formula – acting against every moral and ethical code ever written.  But when Nicolas looked back down at him, all he could see was a dying friend.  _One test, he thought to himself.  He came nearer to the pitiful, bloody figure, then dropped the formula just out of its reach.  _

Xavier seemed to come alive with an animal excitement, dragging himself, panting, across the grass toward the piece of parchment.  Nicolas quickly grabbed it and backed up again.  "Nicolas, please!"  Xavier gasped, his voice a death rattle, his eyes bulging.  

"Unforgivable," He said, more to himself than to Xavier.  "Completely unforgivable…" 

Nicolas stumbled back a few steps, as though prying himself from a magnet.  

A shuddering moan ripped itself from Xavier's bloody chest.  "Nooo!"  But it was too late.  Nicolas had gone, with no intent to ever come back.  

Xavier could sense his own life slipping away.  The unicorns' souls were dragging him to death in a furious attempt to finish what they had begun in life.  Had he the energy, he would have cursed them aloud, but it was difficult enough to keep his ruined chest going up and down.  There was nothing, _nothing he could do to outlast the minute.  _

Or was there? 

The nearest of the unicorn carcasses was stretched out like a white burial sheet just a few feet away, soaked in silver.  Xavier gathered up his remaining strength, dragged himself forward, and raised his head.  There was only a moment's hesitation before he pressed his hand against the unicorn's blood and licked the shimmering liquid away from his own fingers.  

Right away, two things happened.  First, the pain dulled and his fortitude was restored.  But the physical anguish was replaced with moral devastation as the good that remained in his soul was quickly eroded away, this one act dissolving his humanity almost as totally as a Dementor's kiss.  

With a wry smile, he sat upright with no trouble at all.  He had cheated death!  Now he was thinking clearer, he realized that it was also a form of Dark magic he had employed: "Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe," he muttered to himself, recalling the ancient – but deeply evil – Reawakening Ceremony.  This was no time, however, to rejoice in personal victory.  Nicolas was still out there, the fool, probably stumbling around the forest in search of a way back.  Cold logic said that he had to be destroyed.  

Xavier leaped to his feet, ready to hunt down and kill Nicolas, but he suddenly felt as though his legs had disappeared.  He stumbled back and fell against a tree trunk, gaping at his own body in horror.

Where the Baron had been lean and muscular, he was now twiglike, brittle, and gaunt.  His front was dripping with silver and red, and he couldn't separate the two metallic tastes in his mouth.__

But the worst was that no matter how hard he tried, the appendages he needed to use would always fade into ghostly mist when he needed them.  "Good God!"  he gasped.  Such a price to flush out the pain of death…was the frustration, the helplessness truly worth it?  Before, dying, Xavier had felt like there was nothing he could do.  Now he knew the true meaning of that sorry state.  He leaned back against the tree's roots and felt burning rage well up in his heart.  How long he sat there, useless and seething, he would never remember, but he knew that it was daylight by the time he stopped, because the magic of the unicorn blood was slipping from him, and the searing pain awoke him to the sun like a punch to the face. 

His wounds, which had been sealed and soothed for the time that he was under the spell, burst open once again.  The strength was sapped out of his muscles, his heartbeat plodded to a near halt, and his lungs once again refused air.  The pain was so intense that he lunged for the unicorn's corpse again, desperate for relief.  

_The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death…_

But some part of him, some damned melancholy part of his mind, begged not to be dragged back into that state of near-being that the unicorn blood caused.  He rolled to the center of the clearing, where there were miraculously no bodies – that is, no temptation - and gritted his teeth against the pain.    

_But at a terrible price._

Indeed, that one taste of unicorn's blood would keep the Baron Xavier LeRivierus alive for weeks, but in deadly pain and endless misery.  His resolve was miraculously firm; never once did he give in to the temptation of just one more sip of the precious unicorn blood.  __

_For you have slain something pure and defenseless to save yourself…_

He knew that he was safe from all but himself, because not even the basest of magical creatures would dare invade the sanctity of a unicorn's resting place.  Only a wizard, full of hatred and devoid of compassion, would stoop so low.  

_You will live a half-life…_

These were the thoughts that pained him most.  The thoughts that he could have easily avoided the suffering if he had been honest and good, if he had only not deceived Nicolas that fateful night.  Perhaps they would be toasting each other's good health with gobletfuls of the Elixir of Life at this moment, had he simply forestalled his greed.

_A cursed life…_

Yet soon, even the self-pity gave way to a truer emotion.  Dear God, what if Nicolas had never found his way back?  And even if he had, would the boy ever be able to trust again?  Xavier had betrayed a friendship in which Nicolas had invested faith, time, and genuine feeling.  All Xavier had ever wanted, he finally understood, was that formula!  Bitterness and guilt descended on him just as death crept up.  And this time, death was not prepared to take no for an answer.  Xavier knew it.  "Nicolas…" 

_From the moment the blood touches your lips.  _

"I'm sorry." 

Death was once again left with nothing while the Bloody Baron, eyes sunken and staring, made his way to Slytherin Tower, which was to become his eternal home. 

**Disclaimer:  The Bloody Baron, Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Hogwarts, most of the unicorn concepts, the Sorcerer's Stone, Dementors, the Reawakening Ceremony, and various other things belong to JKR.  The storyline, Baron Xavier LeRivierus (who isn't _really the same as the Bloody Baron, u know, I'm just trying 2 b deep, lol), the exact effects of drinking unicorn blood, the Night-Vision Spell, and that black lightning shocky retrieval thing are mine.  _**


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